In 2014, cases of violence against women were 52,399, just over 143 per day. However, the issue was nowhere near as present on the public agenda as it is today, thanks in large part to the feminist movement Ni Una Menos (2015) and then to the International Women Strike (2017).

This piece started from the need to give visibility to that violence. But what’s the use of denouncing something if you do not even try to present new possibilities to the reality that is being denounced? From this question came the idea of ​​interviewing  women who were competitively trained to fight and choose six of them to explore situations of physical, psychological and sexual abuse—using my hegemonic male body as a mirror and channel of the worst of social masculinity. The rules were agreed upon during the interview and in the talk immediately prior to performing the work: basically, I was going to explore situations of abuse with them and they could defend themselves using all their training. And the work was participatory, so if someone from the public chooses not to participate, they become an accomplice and voyeur of what happens in front of them.

Satyr (2014): durational participatory performative installation. Curated by Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich and Marcello Pisu, commissioned as part of Fyodor’s Performance Carousel, Faena Arts Center.

Click HERE for video-documentation (by Ilya Pusenkoff and Guta Galli).